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I have a Sony DVD changer connected to my Fujitsu P42VHA30 using the component input (Video 3). The DVD player is configured for a 16:9 TV.

Last night I tried my first DVDs on the Fujitsu, Toy Story 1 and 2 (they are both 1.77:1), and no matter how hard I tried I wasn't able to feel the whole screen with the signal being output by the DVD player.

Right and left were alright, but on the upper and lower part of the screen there seems to be 2 or 3 horizontal lines that are off during the DVD playback.

I tried selecting "auto" on the wide settings but this option was not available. I am using "Wide 2" which according to previous posts is the correct setting to watch anamorphic DVDs.

I also tried resizing the image, but this procedure won't allow me to go beyond the 2-3 line border (above and below the image).

Make sure that the DVD player is set to 16X9 and not 4:3 or letterbox. I don't think that 1.77:1 would create bars. Toy Story is this ratio.

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These DVDs should just fill your screen from top to bottom and side to side at the display's default size settings. You should not need to do size adjustment here.

Off hand I would think the problem is more likely to be in your DVD player. If you haven't seen it before on your old TV it may be due to the degree of overscan on your old TV.

If you get a calibration DVD such as Avia you will find a section including geometry test screens particularly designed for wide screen displays (i.e., circles on the test pattern will look like circles rather than ovals when the player and display are set to fill the screen with the test pattern). You can use this to verify that Wide2 is really the correct Display setting here (I'm pretty sure it is).

The patterns will have indicators on the edges so that you can see just how the edges of the image are lining up with the edges of your display.

Use such a test pattern with your current hardware, and then borrow another component DVD player to see if it makes a difference. That way you'll be able to isolate whether the problem is in your display or in your player.

The only display setting I can think of that would alter the default display geometry for the Component inputs is the screen orbiter. But I'm pretty sure that the orbiter's effect, on all inputs, is to make the image larger (as well as shifting it around), so you'd lose portions of the edge of the image rather than have the image show smaller than the display.
--Bob

Larry:
I am positive the Toy Story DVD is 1.77:1. By the way, Wide 1 will fill the whole screen with not much distortion. Maybe the difference between the DVD's 1.77:1 aspect and the plasma's 1.78:1 aspect is enough to create this problem?
What really baffles me is why "auto" is not available in this input for the wide settings and also why I can not resize the image to fill this lines on top and bottom of the screen. While using the Video 4 input for HD material, I am able to resize the image to fill the whole screen and beyond, if I so choose to do so (thats the way I feel the screen while watching 2.35:1 HD programming.

Barry:
The DVD player is set to 16:9

Bob:
I've used these calibration tests and I fixed the overscan for this input and the different wide modes. While using avia, all of the screen is filled with the signal; not so when playing the Toy Story DVD. This is why I don't think the DVD player is to blame. Maybe the plasna is not to blame either, but the explanation lies in the difference between the 1.77:1 aspect ratio of this DVD and the 1.78:1 aspect ratio of the plasma. What do you think?

When you say you have "fixed the overscan" what do you mean? Have you changed the horizontal or vertical screen size settings from the factory default to do that?

I can play Toy Story 1 via the DVI input in Wide mode (equals Wide2 for Component) at 1080i without any such problem using the default image size and centering settings on my Fujitsu P50 and the HDMI output from a Pioneer Elite 59avi. The same is true using those devices via Component cables to Video3 in Wide2 mode.

An image of 1.77 aspect ratio, which fills the screen from left to right without stretching would be TALLER than a 1.78 screen.
--Bob

I fixed the overscan in the component input using Avia and resizing the image.

Since when using Avia I was able to fill the whole screen with the image output by the DVD player, I don't see any reason to believe the player is at fault.
I will try other 1.77:1 dvds and compare results.

OK. There may very well be some variation in size between the image this particular DVD is putting out and the calibration DVD. It happens. If you've eliminated overscan, the edge issues you are seeing may very well be the DVD. What puzzled me was that you said it was so bad that you couldn't get this movie to fill the screen even if you re-sized the image -- that is, that the range of re-size control in the display wasn't big enough to deal with the issue.

The display as you know is shipped with a modest amount of overscan to deal with variation in quality between sources and between source content. TV shows sometimes get shifted up or down for instance. The factory default setting should work fine for those who don't want to tweak, but there's no reason not to adjust to eliminate the overscan as you did. However, if you have problems with any particular source content, there should be sufficient range in the sizing and centering controls to deal with it, or you can return some overscan so you don't have to bother.

How much did you have to adjust to fix your overscan? I.e., what are your current sizing and centering settings? Is it possible you used Avia to adjust this while the screen orbiter was turned on in the display and now have it turned off?
--Bob

Bob wrote:
"What puzzled me was that you said it was so bad that you couldn't get this movie to fill the screen even if you re-sized the image -- that is, that the range of re-size control in the display wasn't big enough to deal with the issue"

Bob, the way I see it, this is the main problem and the one I was trying to solve when I first made my post.
I want to clarify that the issue is not with the range of re-size control in the display, since it seems to work fine and I can stretch the image as far as I want. The issue here is that when playing the Toy Story DVD, the image shown in the screen does not use the top and button 2-3 lines. Thus, when you resize the image, it changes it's size accordingly to the changes I make in the size controls (width and length), but this changes in size won't allow me to eliminate the inactive lines above and below the image....You might say this "off lines" are the new limits (above and below) of my plasma screen.

Using the 16:9 overscan or pixel cropping test screen from your calibration DVD you have adjusted both the vertical and horizontal size controls and the centering controls to eliminate overscan, center the image, and have the calibration image just fill the screen precisely to all 4 screen edges. There are no unused (black) lines top or bottom when you complete this.

Then you play the Toy Story 1 DVD and find that a few lines top and bottom are black-- no image -- i.e., apparently the image coming from that DVD is not as tall as the image from the calibration DVD, albeit still centered, so that you have the same number of black (unused) lines on the top as on the bottom. Or alternatively, the display has somehow decided not to use a few lines on the top and bottom for some reason and is just displaying black as if it had added tiny letter-box bars top and bottom.

Now, while still playing Toy Story 1, you go back in and try to eliminate those gaps by changing the vertical size control. And adjusting that control indeed stretches the Toy Story 1 image vertically so that some of the top and bottom of the movie now vanishes just as if it had been stretched (overscanned) beyond the top and bottom of the display, BUT THE BLACK LINES ON TOP AND BOTTOM REMAIN VISIBLE AND UNCHANGED?

Bizarre!

If I wanted to engineer this stuff so that it would fail this way on Toy Story 1 and yet work properly with your calibration DVD I wouldn't have a clue how to do it.

The fact that the black lines don't change even though the movie image size changes when you adjust the vertical size implies they are being generated by the display. But if that's the case, it should do it on the 16:9 wide screen images from the calibration DVD as well.

I'm at a loss.

The only thing I can think of is that your display has a fault which only shows up when it is NOT stretching 4:3 images, and that the images you happened to select from the calibration DVD when you adjusted overscan where actually the 4:3 geometry images -- stretched out to fill the screen by the Wide2 mode on your display (i.e., circles look like ovals on those images). In other words, that stretching just happened to fix a bug in the display which shows up only when fed 16:9 images. That would imply that if you now selected the 16:9 widescreen geometry images from your calibration DVD you should ALSO see these black bars and not be able to eliminate them.

But if you were actually using the 16:9 geometry images from the calibration DVD without seeing these bars, then I really have no idea what might be going on here.
--Bob